Carved by the Garden: A Folk Horror Solo RPG (Actual Play, Part 1)

Overview of Carved by the Garden: A Folk Horror Solo RPG

Now that spooky season is coming to an end, I’m wrapping up my playthrough of Carved by the Garden to move on to cozier things.

A folk-horror game by Cassi Mothwin, Carved by the Garden is a solo rpg about exploring the woods…and losing yourself in them.

The premise of the game is that you are being called to the woods, and forced to follow the wicked pull. Those who live with you are afraid for your safety, but you are forced to continue deeper into the wilderness.

The gameplay loop is simple: At the start of each in-game ‘day’, roll a d6 to determine how many encounters your character will endure while exploring the woods. Pull cards from a standard playing card deck, then flip them over, in order, and find the corresponding card in the game’s tables. Each card has a different prompt associated with it, that your character must experience or overcome. At the end of the drawn encounters, your character returns to their lodging and writes about what they have seen.

That’s how you’re supposed to play, anyway. As a story-forward player (the back cover suggests the game could be played in a single 1-3 hour session. This post spans three sessions and 5 hours of gameplay…), I have modified the rules slightly. I feel as though a d6 produces too many encounters, so I flip all of the cards over, read the prompts, and rearrange/discard as makes sense to me. I will also use certain encounters as dreams, to keep things feeling more cohesive to me.

Prompts are wide-ranging, and include open-ended questions to help inspire the story. While there are no character creation tables, there are plenty of ideas to help you generate your character, as well as some basic questions to answer.

Read my first impressions post for Carved by the Garden

My Character

My character took shape fairly easily as I began answering the prompts.

What draws you to the woods each day?
Who do you live with?
Why do they wish you’d stop visiting the woods?
What would you do if you didn’t go into the woods?
What do you fear in the woods?

I kept these in mind as I created my character- Irving Hawthorne, park worker for the Civilian Conservation Corps. In addition to solo gaming, I also love hiking and the outdoors. Being in Texas, we have a rich state park system, with CCC structures and history being heavily intertwined. I envisioned my character as being part of a planning crew for a state park, drawing inspiration heavily from Mother Neff State Park (the closest park to me, and the first state park in Texas!). He traipsed through the woods each day, initially planning a trail system, but now seems to be looking for something he can’t quite remember. He lives with his survey crew, hard men who took government jobs to provide for their families during the Great Depression.

Playthrough, Part 1

Day 1

I know you fellas are worried about me, so I started writing down what I get into off in them woods. They’re the same ones you’re in, so I don’t get the fuss, but it never hurt a man to write down his musings. I expect you’re going to try and find something to embarrass me maybe, but I don’t aim to talk about anything like that. Y’all promised not to read it unless something happened to me, but I’m the youngest one of the CCC boys set up here so I imagine I’ll be reading your piece long before you get a chance at mine.

Day 2

The rains have been fierce this week, and the other boys are still in the cabin. We were in a drought so the rain is welcome, but it’s too much for the parched land. I’m going out to day to see how much of our work has been undone. I had the strangest notion to go out barefoot, and I guess I may as well not ruin my boots with all that mud. Besides, I have something strange going on with the bottom of my feet. They’re all torn up and rough like, but don’t hurt unless I put shoes on. I’ll stop by the doctor’s the next time we ride into town, but I reckon I’m just getting used to the work. We all have to tough up sometime, feet included.

I spent a good while trudging through the clay, hitching up my pants as I picked through the dense mud. They’re torn all to filth anyway, and everyone here’s a working man, so I gave up and felt the denim get heavier with every step. Finally I got to the spot where I like to go and breathe in deep. The air is wet and still, and I set for a piece with my thoughts. The wind picked up, and I had a mind to follow it.

I came to a clearing full of old live oaks and closed my eyes, enjoying the peace. The cool mud felt good on my feet, and I would have fallen asleep standing up if I hadn’t a heard a voice. I weren’t scared, yet- the voice sounded like it came from inside of me.

“This person bore witness,” it croaked, from somewhere within and without. I opened my eyes only to be stung by a cloud of ash. I rubbed them with my kerchief but the dust was so thick and wet I was just smearing the grime around. I squinted to follow the cloud, and saw it came from a thing up in the tree. It was just hanging there, like a trapper forgot his catch, but it was man-shaped.

“Will you be next?” the voice asked as I turned away from the ruined figure. I said a few words of prayer for the poor sinner and went on, black now gently floating from the burnt corpse in an evil snowfall.

It seems I was in a different spot of the woods today, because I saw something else I never seen before. As I came to the stone structure, I first thought it was something we’d started. It looked too old- and too neat- to be our work, though. Maybe it was a stone cottage or some such thing. I got to looking closer and there was a painting on the wall that made me feel strange. It was real old looking, and white across the rocks. As best as I could make out, it was one person eating another. Trying to tell you about it is like trying to explain a dream. One figure was a person, but was also a coyote, and it was ripping right into the other thing that was like a human but also a deer. I stared, trying to gain understanding, and the longer I looked, the more it seemed almost alive.

I stepped forward, walking on the cobbled stone floor, and realized it was the flicker of candles that made the figures seem to move. I don’t know who was lighting candles in this weather, but I blowed them out just to see what would happen. I felt suddenly very cold, and another voice came to me. This one frightened me, as it didn’t seem to come from within. It seemed to come from the very stones themselves.

“Kneeeeeeeel,” a voice commanded, rough and ancient. “Let me taste of your flesh.” I’m embarrassed to tell you that it’s been a spell since I’ve heard a woman’s voice, and I was kinda tranced until I realized what she was saying. I don’t know what she wanted or who she was, because I turned right back around to try my luck again with the burned up feller up in that tree.

I guess I got turned around though, because I ended up going downhill and came upon the little crick that goes back to the cabin. It was going pretty good on account of the weather we had, and there were trees crashed down all along the bank. I heard another shout- this time it sounded human, although it was cut off in a sudden silence. I went on down in the little gully that ran through, and looked about to where I heard the sound. I tried to tell the boys about it later that night, but they just got that cold look in their eyes like they do when I talk about the woods, and sipped slow on their liquor. There weren’t nobody down there, anyhow. All’s I found was a cracked skull wedged in the crook of a tree, and I left it well enough alone.

I waded back through the crick, washing the clay caked all up and down my legs. I pondered all the strangeness I had seen, my mind on the woods long after I returned.

Day 3

I dreamed about the burned one last night. I kept jerking awake, and every time I fell back asleep, he turned into someone else. Mother. Daddy. Leon. I had the feeling it weren’t a dream, but a real place I was going to. Back in them damned woods. The last time I fell asleep, I dreamt the trees were all aflame. I heard a terrible buzzing and looked up to see large, papery nests on the branches above. I fled the maddened energy of the hornets and woke in a cold sweat. I didn’t dare sleep again. I sat on the front porch until the sun came up, dreading my work for the day.

I set off from the rest of the team. They won’t say it outright, but they know something is wrong with me. I don’t know why the woods don’t touch them the same way they do me, but still, they fear them….as they do me.

This time I turned away from the stream as I set out. “These two dollar shoes hurt my feet,” I sang as I walked through the cool grass barefoot. It started to thin and turn into a sure enough pass that I began to follow. It twisted around some and led me to an overgrown orchard. The trees were in neat rows, but untended, and the branches gnarled and twisted into a thicket overhead. I ignored my misgivings and crept forward. A grotesque, wet thud landed behind me, and I wondered at the rotted and blackened fruit. We’d had bad years at the farm, but I’d never seen anything like this. The trees, too, oozed a thick black sap. They became more stooped under the weight of their evil burden as the row went on, and I followed it to its end. The grass was wet and saturated with the foul black liquid, and it pooled like oil around my feet.

At the hest of the orchard I found a skeleton- it seemed to me it was absorbing the evil life blood from the trees. Or maybe supplying it. I shivered as I kneeled and got closer. Thrust straight into the figure’s chest was…my knife? I reached for the sheath on my belt and found it empty. This was my knife, but it was covered in ages of the rancid, pooling oil. The skeleton, too, was picked clean, clearly undisturbed for years. And yet.

As I reached down to retrieve my knife, a torrent of sap unleashed from the dense branches above. It slithered around my arm, burning like gasoline as it dripped onto the ground. I rubbed off the sticky film and found the impression of a gnarled hand clutching my arm.

I stumbled away, knife extended, as I backed away from the thing what wanted to take me. Kneeling at the stream leading to the cabin, I cleaned myself off. The black ooze clouded the water like ink as it washed away, but the mark remained.